AlumniReview32014_0

campus
sCene
Jill Scott is
leading the
charge to
transform
the Queen’s
learning
experience.
Head of the class
UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Jill Scott’s eyes light up
the minute someone
mentions the word
“teaching.”
For the German
professor and viceprovost
(teaching and
learning), pedagogy is
a passion.
“I see being here at
Queen’s as an enormous
privilege,” says
Dr. Scott, who took on
the newly-created viceprovost
role in 2013.
“People trust us with
students, and we owe it
to them to demonstrate
that students have
learned.”
Though it is a relatively
new portfolio,
Dr. Scott has accomplished
much in the
last year. Together with
Brian Frank, Professor
and Director of Program
Development in the
Faculty of Engineering
and Applied Science, she co-chaired the Provost’s
Task Force on the Student Learning Experience.
The task force, which included faculty members,
students and administrators, released its Teaching
and Learning Action Plan in March 2014.
The plan, which includes 15 teaching-related
recommendations, provides a road map for the
future of teaching and learning
at Queen’s. Read it online at
bit.ly/QAR31280.
Recommendations include
everything from establishing a
University Teaching and Learning
Committee and developing
university-wide support for
eLearning, to creating mechanisms
to hire teaching-focused faculty positions
that include scholarship of teaching and learning
in higher education.
“We spent a lot of time asking ourselves: What
is the essence of student engagement? What is the
best way to ensure that students come away with
the best possible learning experience?” says Dr.
Scott. “We also looked at best practices across the
sector – what other institutions are doing that we,
as a quintessential balanced academy, could also
be doing.”
Dr. Scott notes the growing push towards assessing
student learning, and focusing on learning
outcomes, is changing the way people view the
learning experience.
“It’s about teaching people to be lifelong learners,
to understand themselves as learners,” she says.
“What are the most important skills? They’re
the transferrable skills.”
That means ensuring that teachers are thinking
more deliberately about incorporating opportunities
for students to learn critical thinking, problem
solving, and communication skills, and providing
spaces that enable those opportunities. The recently
renovated Ellis Hall classrooms are a shining
example of how changes to physical space can
improve the student learning experience. (See story
on page 21.)
But Dr. Scott also points out that transforming
learning spaces goes beyond classrooms, citing
the recent Library and Archives Master Plan
(lamp) as one that prioritizes “community” spaces
that encourage active learning for individuals and
small groups.
Community learning spaces are also being
created online. Queen’s was recently awarded funding
to design and host 13 online courses, receiving
19 per cent of the total funding available through
the new Ontario Online initiative. The courses run
the gamut from Anatomy of the Human Body to
Introduction to Literary Study to Engineering
Economics.
Many instructors are also bringing aspects of
more traditional courses online, incorporating
videos, readings and online discussion to enhance
the in-class learning
experience.
“I believe in transformative
learning, and
that every learning
experience should be
transformative in some
way,” she says.
Next up for Dr. Scott
and her team is to revise the name, mandate and
scope of the teaching and learning service unit
(currently called the Centre for Teaching and
Learning).
“We’re trying to help our students become
future leaders, to lead them to leadership. There’s
just nothing more inspiring than seeing that
transformation happen right before your eyes.”
B Kristyn Wallace, Artsci’05
“I believe in transformative
learning, and that every
learning experience should be
transformative in some way.”
4 Issue 3, 2014 | alumnireview.queensu.ca